Spacelancer

## Added - COR-484 — Pilots can supply material shortages, restart production, and see independent freight haulers pursue profitable routes.

## Added - **COR-466** — Buy, fit, fly, fight with, and dock the Continuance Candle fighter, a compact enclosed defense ship with two stock beams.

## Changed - [COR-245] Stations now expose multi-berth interfaces with ordinary player-hull ownership, fitting, docking, and return behavior across the current supported routes. - [COR-464] Patternworks now has a native Spacelancer-rendered live authoring slice where station briefs update modular geometry with undo, save, and reopen support.

## Added - **COR-221** — Defended faction space now has authored fleet and station-defense direction for player-facing encounters. ## Changed - **COR-426** — Tug flight tuning is locked into shipped defaults with steadier steering onset and hull-specific response. - **COR-451** — Hull definitions are consolidated into a typed catalog so ships share consistent authoring and fitting data. - **COR-245** — Station defense direction now defines layered faction-specific shields, turrets and escort wings. - **COR-452** — Director camera tooling now supports repeatable in-game discovery, framing, capture and bounded shot selection. ## Fixed - **COR-448** — Solid geometry collision coverage and impact response are more dependable and forgiving. - **COR-449** — Job guidance now follows the selected navigation target instead of exposing an ineffective contact action. - **COR-450** — Job contact presentation replaces the placeholder panel with clearer target guidance.

## Changed - **COR-426** — Mouse aim now stays where you place it while a central deadzone and ship-specific angular acceleration make turning, braking, and reversals feel deliberate in the Tug and Kestrel.

## Added - **COR-428** — Mouse aim, hull heading and weapon limits now work as separate, readable parts of flight. - **COR-429** — Right click fires equipped launchers independently from primary weapons. - **COR-430** — Shift provides a finite recoverable afterburner; Space controls cruise. ## Changed - **COR-443** — The Kestrel now uses its accepted structural hull revision with warm navigation lights for player and civilian ships. - **COR-426, COR-431, COR-338** — Tug and Kestrel flight tuning now uses the accepted responsive baseline, including the previously accepted low-speed approach tuning. - **COR-442, COR-339, COR-435, COR-438** — Contacts, chart locations, job objectives and moving distress calls share one target. B selects the job objective; P engages autopilot. Target changes stay locked until autopilot disengages. - **COR-336, COR-375, COR-434** — P disengages autopilot immediately; S brakes and cancels cruise and afterburner for manual flight. - **COR-436, COR-433** — Pilot management shows where saves live and how to open that folder; saves remain independent of the install directory. - **COR-337** — Flight instruments distinguish afterburner reserve from weapon energy and heat, with details available on inspection. ## Fixed - **COR-437, COR-441** — Parked ships are solid obstacles, with improved berth separation and traffic yielding during launch and docking. Ore job and cargo imagery now uses the shipped rock and ore models. - **COR-376, COR-439** — Port Services now keeps the account display and navigation rail consistent across services, Ships & Cargo and Chart. - **COR-440** — Restoring a valid checkpoint after a wreck no longer rejects it because of the destroyed current hull; malformed save state still fails safely. - **COR-432** — Nightly extraction and launch checks now preserve and verify executable permissions for `launch.sh` and the game binary.

## Added - **COR-390** — More reliable private-playtest checks now help separate a real game run from a tooling or capture check. - **COR-425** — Private Linux playtest builds are published automatically with release notes tied to the shipped source and disclosed host baseline. ## Changed - **COR-329** — The Commonweal Yard presentation experiment was canceled and reverted; the indoor-forest/livable-mobile-home identity is not claimed as delivered here. - **COR-422** — Kiln now centers on a monumental gas giant and clearly structured rocky mineral lanes, with resolved cloud detail and readable local mining context.

Playtest 4 · September 9, 2026 Build ID: 2026.09.09-playtest.1 Changes since Playtest 3 (2026.09.07-playtest.2). Your pilot, your starting point Create named pilots with independent checkpoint histories. Continue resumes the selected pilot; Load Game provides manual saves, quicksave, rotating autosaves, rename, deletion and recovery options. Choose A new pilot, Work the belt, A loaded hold, Armed and ready or Far from home for a fresh start without replacing earlier progress. Settings include remappable controls, sound, display previews, UI scale and reduced motion. Older saves are checked explicitly rather than silently reset. Gate journeys and station arrivals Gate travel now has departure, transit and arrival presentation. Docking and launch add approach, alignment, settling, lift, turning and acceleration with blended cameras. Controls and saving wait for station choreography to finish. Departure guidance clears the berth before turning toward remote destinations. Mining worth exploring Regional belts add fractured banks in Kiln, layered shelves in Meridian and deep side pockets in Veil. Rebuilt asteroid surfaces expose embedded minerals; weapon impacts shed stone and dust. Metal, industrial and iridium ore share the hold and sell at regional prices. Survey and Deep Survey scanners reveal composition, grade and reserves without increasing yield. Ordinary deposit depletion and scan knowledge persist. Pickup and reward notices report completed changes rather than promised earnings. The Unforsaken Veil now hosts distinct Shiv, Moth, Maul and Harrow raiders with different combat roles. Explore to discover Second Hearth inside a split asteroid, with occupied repair bays and separately targetable defensive guns. It is hostile, not a public station. Garrison losses and surviving defenders' damage and ammunition persist. Cargo-scan warnings more clearly signal danger; an early escape can matter more than a heavy hold. Veil's turbulent hypergiant and planetary setting have also been reworked. Jobs, People and Target Jobs replaces Contracts; People replaces the station Contacts tab; Target identifies the selected sensor object. Ready hand-ins and started-story continuations draw contextual amber attention. Delivery instructions now explain obtaining and keeping cargo, docking at the destination and using Jobs to turn it in instead of selling the goods. Equipment, not a configuration form The new Equipment screen replaces Workshop with directly selectable hardpoints, a twelve-weapon Catalog and separate Owned storage. Inspect production models, select tiers and modifications, compare selected and fitted burst statistics, and expand Specifications when needed. Buy & Fit purchases and installs; Fit Stored reuses owned equipment without a purchase charge. Repairs and cargo, scanner and drive upgrades live under Ship services. A separate developer Test Flight workbench supports isolated fitting experiments. Clearer first visits The Market introduces exploration and local price comparisons, with an About trading reminder and an explicit early-development notice. Hangar copy explains ship roles without the old generic tradeoff legend. Additional fixes improve weapon aim alignment, hit feedback, title-screen departure and pilot-name input retention. Weapon and docking audio have received further revisions. This is still a private Linux development playtest, not a finished onboarding, economy or balance pass. Read the included PLAYTEST.md and this release's Known Issues, back up your pilot saves before switching builds, and use F12 notes to show what helped or confused you.

Playtest 3 · September 7, 2026 This post-MVP build expands contract guidance, trading, combat rewards and the look of the region, with fixes from the latest playtests. These notes cover everything added since Playtest 2. Contracts and navigation Contract objectives now have selectable beacons and directional guidance. Press B to select the current objective and P to engage autopilot toward the selected contact. Guidance follows moving objectives, points remote work toward the appropriate gate and advances to contract turn-in. Manual flight input takes over from autopilot. Trading A new Buy/Sell ticket replaces the fixed quantity buttons. Enter an exact quantity, use minus/plus or Max, review the total and resulting credits and cargo use, then explicitly confirm the trade. Quantity editing keeps game shortcuts from interrupting your order. A working Open Hand The mobile yard now follows a slow industrial patrol, slows for nearby ships and stops for service work. Its approach, chart position and autopilot destination move with it. Combat consequences and rewards Shield or hull damage interrupts cruise and starts a six-second recovery period for both you and NPC ships. The target display shows that recovery. Contributing to an eligible pirate's defeat pays 250 CR and local reputation; successful distress assistance pays 400 CR. These rewards can accompany contract payments and are protected against duplicate payouts after loading. Ship showroom and clearer comparisons The hangar displays the actual ships and materials in a lit, rotating showroom. Benefits and tradeoffs use clearer colors across the interface. Rotation now keeps the ship centered with a stationary camera, addressing the reported jitter. Distinct systems Kiln has a rebuilt planetary anchor with continental forms and an atmospheric limb. Meridian's paired stars and Veil's animated red giant give their systems separate identities. These are orbital views, not landable surfaces. Targeting and feedback Shift+Tab reliably reverses the contact cycle without toggling cruise. Distant hit flashes now shrink with perspective and disappear beyond 1.5 km. Player hit confirmations no longer fade away with target distance, and mining and salvage use a stronger pickup confirmation. Jump stability Fixed a lighting-preparation timing problem that could crash travel into Meridian. This remains a private Linux development playtest. The included guide reflects this build's controls and systems; see Known Issues for the platform and verification limits.

Second private Linux playtest of Spacelancer (working title). This build brings station contracts, market, workshop, hangar and contacts into a clearer service flow; adds the ship inventory and shared cargo hold; and makes the regional chart update while flying. It also includes checkpoint-safe roll orientation, collision recovery and tow choices, attacker intercept aiming with shield/hull cues, persistent regional traffic, six directed gate transitions, and the latest Open Hand and starter tug materials. The build is packaged from the clean 3fbc245 checkpoint after the September 7 playtest iteration. It is an early development snapshot: progression, presentation, audio/pacing and performance acceptance are still evolving.

First private Linux playtest of Spacelancer (working title). Start at Foundry Port, take contracts, mine and trade cargo, explore the regional chart and jump gates, and return for repairs and upgrades. Includes the latest ships, stations, lighting and sound, combat encounters, persistent traffic and checkpoint saves. An early development snapshot: balance, presentation and progression are still evolving.